Yahoo sorry after Flickr exposes some users' privates

Routine maintenance by-passed privacy setting

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Internet giant Yahoo has issued an apology after a small number of users' private Flickr photos were mistakenly made public.

Yahoo, which of course owns the popular photo-sharing site, admitted that the protected photos of a "very, very small" sample of users had been visible to the entire community from January 18 to February 7.

The problem was a result of "routine maintenance," and had been identified and fixed according to official correspondence from both Yahoo and its Flickr division.

Flickr vice president Brett Wayn is now contacting those affected users individually, rather than making public blog posts about the issue.

'Incredibly disturbing'

One user, Barry Schwartz, expressed his disgust that 688 of his private photos and videos had been mate public for nearly three weeks as a result of the bug.

He posted the contents of the "incredibly disturbing" email from Wayn on the Search Engine Roundtable website.

"We are deeply sorry this happened. As an avid Flickr user, I am personally committed to ensuring your memories are safe," Wayn wrote.

"Our team worked hard to earn your trust and we take it very seriously. We've put in place a number of additional measures to prevent this from happening again."

Yahoo added in its own statement: "We're deeply sorry this happened and that we're working with affected users directly to fix the issue."